Wagner's Vendetta
by WarlordFil
Summary: There's no peace for hapless Vinnie Gregarino when Jackal and Hyena are attacking, the girl he likes is in danger...and Alex Xanatos has just switched Vinnie's body with that of an Illuminati assassin. In three parts.
1. Chapter 1

**AUTHOR'S NOTE #1:** Thanks to Christi "Spike" Smith Hayden, who made me repeat a remark in chat about Wagner and his dear friend, "Mr. Handgun," and Todd Jensen, who compared that to Vinnie's "Mr. Carter" and started this whole thing. To Amy K. "Eddie" Cyrway, for her advice on fine vehicles and speed limits. To Kellie Fay and Mat "Mer" Little for more speed limit advice. To Dylan P. "Whitbourne" Blacquiere, for shoptalk discussions, especially where villains are concerned. To Dave "Wingless" Sampson, for the Gargoyles Series II cards; the Jackal and Hyena ones were a big help here. And to everyone else in the chat room the night this story was born. This is all your fault, guys. Hope you enjoy it.

The Gargoyles characters are the property of Disney; this story is written for fun, not profit. "Dangerous" is sung by Roxette. Wagner, Aashlee and Sophia are my own.

**AUTHOR'S NOTE #2: **This is a rather old fanfic, dating back at least ten years and likely more. I'm still trying to find Aashlee's origin story, and the full tale of Wagner's first involvement with the Manhattan Clan was never completed. Nevertheless, I think the story remains entertaining, with plenty of canon characters and the ever-hapless Vinnie, and so I present it here.

**WAGNER'S VENDETTA**

**Chapter the First (of three)  
**

SUNSET THE EYRIE BUILDING NEW YORK CITY

"Truly magnificent," Hudson decreed, as a swirl of magic returned him to his gargoyle form. The assembled gargoyles--Broadway and Angela, Brooklyn and Aashlee, Lexington, Griff and Bronx--watched as the elderly warrior bent over Alexander Fox Xanatos, nestled in Owen's arms, and shook his hand with a gentle talon. "Thank ye, laddie, for letting me see the sunrise once in my long life."

"How was your day as a human?" Broadway asked with a grin, brushing his recently shed stone skin off the parapets of Castle Wyvern.

Hudson straightened his back, stretching. "Bright. Loud. Exhausting. An experience, to be sure, but I don't think it's something I'll be doing again." Bronx sniffed curiously at Hudson, and sneezed. "Aye, you don't like those daytime smells either, I'll warrant."

Alex gurgled and looked up at Owen curiously. "Goo?" he asked, pointing at Angela.

"No," Owen said. "It's not something _you'll_ be doing for a while either." A frown appeared on the toddler's face, and Owen smiled. "But I _will_ promise that we'll do something interesting later on."

"As long as it's not to me," Angela said, waving at Alex. "Broadway, Lex and I are on patrol tonight and tomorrow, and we don't need to be turning into toads in the middle of it."

"Toads are an elementary level spell," Owen replied seriously. "Alex is moving on to more complicated incantations now."

"Great," Brooklyn replied.

"Would you like to be a volunteer?"

"Oh, no. Not me," the red gargoyle said with an "are-you-NUTS??" look on his face.

"It's completely painless, and I give my personal guarantee that if Alex has difficulty, I will assist him in rectifying the situation," Owen offered.

"Thanks, but no thanks." Brooklyn looked over at Aashlee, his latest expression conveying the message "HELP ME!" as clearly as if he'd spoken the words.

Aashlee wrapped her pale white arms around her boyfriend's neck and kissed his beak. "I kind of like him the way he is," Aashlee said. Then she winked mischievously and added, "Maybe tomorrow." She laughed as Brooklyn's eyes widened in fear that was only partially feigned.

"Excuse us, then," Owen said, and he and Alex took their leave.

"Goliath must have spent the day at Elisa's," Angela said, seeing no sign of her father.

"When's Griff getting back from the concert?" Broadway asked.

Brooklyn shrugged. "Beats me."

"I hope it's after my father leaves," Aashlee worried, twisting a strand of bright pink hair in her five-taloned hand.

"Hey, it'll be all right," Brooklyn said, taking her other hand. "Wagner and Griff just need a little time to cool down and work out their differences, that's all."

"Wagner's a gun-happy maniac!" Broadway protested. "He's not going to sit down and work out his differences!"

"What do you expect?" Lexington replied defensively. "The Illuminati made him be an assassin for a hundred years! How's he supposed to act?"

"But those days are over," Angela said. "It doesn't seem like he's changed all that much."

"Your mother!" Aashlee snapped, eyes reddening as she glared at Angela. Angela's eyes flared in response.

"Whoa, whoa!" Brooklyn protested, stepping between the two females. "Let's not get into this again. Wagner and Griff will settle it themselves. They don't need us to interfere, and we can't afford to take sides. We are all one clan!" Hudson nodded agreement, a frown of worry creasing his face.

"Sorry," Aashlee said, looking up at Angela, who nodded in reply.

"I didn't mean that," Broadway said, scuffling a talon on the floor. "His past just kind of bothers me. You know how I feel about guns."

"It bothers him too," the white gargoyle said quietly, staring out over the city. "He doesn't tell me much about it."

"Well, I suppose the muggers aren't going to wait for us. Come on, let's go on patrol," Broadway suggested. He and Angela took off towards the east.

Minutes later, a most unusual gargoyle walked out onto the parapets. Were it not for the long black wings on his back, anyone would mistake him for a human. He was six feet tall with chiselled Aryan features, crystal blue eyes and golden blond hair that fell in long bangs over his right eyebrow. Yes, he had eyebrows, and fingernails on his five-fingered hands. He was not a half-breed; he was a pure-blooded gargoyle who had been carved during daylight hours into the form of a human man. He retained only the wings and fangs as souvenirs of what he had once been before he became the Illuminati's undercover assassin.

"Vati!" Aashlee cried, and Wagner bent down to welcome his adopted daughter with a hug.

***

"I don't know what I'm going to do," Sophia Lorenz sighed to her co-worker, many stories below the castle. The other security guard just nodded and reached for a donut, looking very bored.

Vinnie Gregarino brushed his unkempt hair underneath his Xanatos Enterprises uniform hat and peered out from the systems control center at Sophia. He'd come back from Japan with credentials good enough to land him a job at the Eyrie Building, and as far as Vinnie was concerned, Sophia was the best part of the job. Gee, she was pretty. She had long black hair, currently brushed back into a bun, and dark Latin eyes. And she never made fun of him, not even on the night when he'd tripped and fallen into the ornamental fountain. ~She's always so nice...I'd sure like to do something for her for a change.~

Vinnie summoned up all his courage and forced himself to walk over to her. "Problem, Sophia?" he choked out.

She turned to him. "My daughter's school has a carnival fundraiser on the weekend, and my ex said he'd help set up a Dunk-the-Teacher booth...only now, he's decided he'd rather go golfing with his buddies. I haven't got the means or the money to get together something big like that." She sighed bitterly. "It's the same story every time. He's never kept a promise in his life, so why did I actually think he'd come through now?"

"Gee, that's really rough, Sophie." Vinnie scratched his head, and suddenly his eyes lit up. "Maybe I got somethin' that'll help you out." Sophia's eyes brightened, and Vinnie shuffled his foot, staring at the floor. "What about hittin' the teacher with a cream pie?"

"Throwing pies?"

"Yeah. 'Cause I...well, I...I gotta pie gun. Fires cream pies. If you can bake 'em, I can loan you the pie gun..."

Sophia's face broke into a smile. "A pie gun. That'd be great, Vinnie. I'd really appreciate that." And then, just to make his night complete, she gave him a hug.

"Sure, Sophia," he whispered. "I'll bring it tomorrow."

***

ONE HOUR BEFORE SUNRISE

Alex woke up an hour before sunrise and toddled off to Owen's quarters. The blond major domo woke up to an insistent tugging on his arm. "Magic! Magic now!"

Owen blinked his eyes, realized what was going on, and changed into something more appropriate. In an instant, the Puck hovered upside-down above Owen's bed.

"What we learn?" Alex asked impatiently.

"We're going to learn about...mind-switching!"

"Done that," Alex said, and Puck shook his head.

"No, it's a little different than soul transference, my boy. Instead of just moving a soul, we pick two people and put each one's mind in the other one's body! It's _lots_ of fun!"

"Me and Lex," Alex suggested.

"Hmmm. You've done a lot of magic with Lexington. Let's pick someone new, all right?" ~Lex is getting _soooo_ boring.~

"Hmmm." Alex tried to twist his face into the same expression as Puck's. "Lisa an' Mona?"

"Who?"

"Lisa an' Mona! Angla wanna talk wif Mona!"

Puck's blood ran a little cold when he realized what Alex was suggesting. "No, Alex, we mustn't cast any spells on Demona." ~Not till your command of magic is better than hers, anyway...~ The Owen part of him filed that in a place in his brain which, if mental files had names, would be labelled "FUN A FEW YEARS DOWN THE ROAD." "Oh, we can pick our lucky guest victims later. First, I'll teach you how to cast this spell." He transformed into Owen.

"Mind switching is best done when both subjects are in a state of rest," Owen lectured. "It takes a while for a mind to become accustomed to another person's body. This is most comfortably accomplished if the subjects are asleep. In this manner, the process of acclimatization can occur without placing undue stress on the subjects."

Alex's attention was drifting, just like a typical student. He sent out a mind-probe, searching for other people in the castle. Mommy, working out in the gym. Hudson, watching television with Bronx at his feet. Brooklyn and Aashlee...yuck, mushy stuff! Daddy, talking on the phone. And...wait, who was this?

The new gargoyle. The one who looked like a man. Alex hadn't seen him around lately.

The toddler gurgled, and decided to show Mr. Wagner one of his new tricks.

***

Wagner sighed as he watched his adopted daughter and Brooklyn walk back into the castle, holding hands. "Young love. I hope they're luckier than I was. Ah, well." He folded his wings and took the elevator down to the lobby.

It was a nice night. Wagner enjoyed the walk down the street to the place where he'd parked his car. Humans passed him on both sides, never once suspecting that the tall blond man in the crowd was really a gargoyle with a pair of folded wings under his black leather jacket.

Wagner's car certainly stood out in the lot. He had a black 1998 Mercedes that he usually drove around, but tonight he'd taken the new car over to Macbeth's and picked up his pride and joy. He ran his hand lovingly over the hood. He'd owned this car since the Second World War.

It was a black Mercedes staff car, complete with the large white crosses on the doors. The vehicle was not in mint vintage condition--he'd installed an unleaded gas system, leather seats, a stereo with cassette tape and now, CD. He customized it as he pleased. Ah, it was good to drive it around every once in a while and remember the old days. A lot of his history was tied up in this car.

Wagner was about to put his key in the lock when suddenly his surroundings went blurry and vanished.

Alarmed, Wagner drew his Walther PPK handgun from his pocket, and was holding it at the ready when the world fuzzed back in...to Owen's room. Owen was holding Alex and looking at the newcomer with a frown.

"Please, Mr. Wagner, no weapons near the child."

"I didn't realize I was _going_ to be near the child," Wagner retorted, a little shaken. "How ya doin', kid?" He ruffled Alex's hair.

"And as for you, young man," Owen frowned, "you can have visitors after your lessons are over."

Wagner shook his head. ~God, I hate magic.~ The humanlike gargoyle looked down at Alex and couldn't help a smile. Ex-assassin or no, he had a weakness for children.

~What would my son have been like?~ He felt a tear welling up in his eye, and forced it away. ~My son's been dead for over sixty years.~ He would mourn for him again--but not here, and not now.

"Play?" Alex asked.

"Maybe later," Wagner choked out, thoughts of his little Rommel still in his mind, and turned away.

~Yes. Later,~ Alex thought.

While Owen showed Wagner to the door, Alex toddled over to Owen's bedside table and began to run his hands over of Owen's briefcase. The case was hanging out over the edge of the night table, and the second Alex pressed down on that corner a little too hard, the briefcase obeyed the laws of gravity and tumbled to the floor, splitting open with the force of the impact. A sheaf of personnel folders spilled out from inside.

Owen vanished in a puff of smoke. The smoke curled across the room and coalesced into Puck. "Well, now, isn't _he_ a spoil-sport," Puck said. "_I_ think it would serve that trigger-happy sourpuss right if someone pulled a little prank on him." Puck grinned widely. "What do you say, Alexander?"

Alex was staring at a the file folder on the top of the heap. It was labelled GREGARINO, VINCENT. The toddler picked it up and peered with curiosity at the photo of the young man and his records. Of all the files in Owen's briefcase, the odds of this one particular file getting Alexander's attention would seem to be very low.

But then again, that was just Vinnie's luck.

The Puck took the file from Alex and flipped through it. "Ah, yes, Mr. Gregarino. He hardly _needs_ anyone to play pranks on him; he's a laugh as it is!"

"Switch?" Alex asked.

Puck laughed uproariously. This kid was turning out just like his teacher! "Yes, Alex. I think Vinnie will work out nicely with this spell."

"Switch Winny...who with?"

Puck remembered the cold glance he'd earned from the mercenary gargoyle. ~Poor sport.~ "Kid, how would you like to show Mr. Wagner your latest and greatest?"

***

Owen made Alex clean up the spilled files using a levitation and transport spell. By the time everything was neatly back in Owen's briefcase, the sun had risen and the Manhattan clan were simply a cluster of stone statues on Castle Wyvern's parapets. Wagner had crept into his bed ten minutes before sunrise, indulging himself in the human pleasure of curling up on a soft mattress and wrapping himself in cozy blankets. Vinnie Gregarino had finished his shift and was just heading home to his apartment when Puck began to lecture Alex on the particularities of a mind-switch spell. And last of all, Demona began the painful transformation to Dominique Destine.

When the experience was over (at least the agony--the indignation of being trapped in a human body would remain until sunset), Demona changed out of her halter and loincloth and into a scarlet power suit, ready to begin another day as the CEO of Nightstone Unlimited. Her first appointment of the morning was with two individuals she had never actually met in person. According to Xanatos, they, their two compatriots, and Xanatos' own wife had given Goliath and the clan some incredible fights. How ironic that Xanatos' former mercenaries were now about to be used against him.

A press of a button slid the secret access panel shut again, hiding the room behind Dominique's office where she kept her private things, including her gargoyle clothing. Seconds later, there was a knock at the door, and a very frightened looking aide ushered in the two people she had asked to see.

"Ah, Mr. Jackal and Ms. Hyena," she said.

"Hey, nice place," Hyena said, looking around.

"You said you had a job for us," Jackal said in his smooth, hollow voice, as Hyena began to examine the liquid-filled "stress-reliever" novelty sitting on Dominique Destine's desk.

Indeed she did. She and Thailog had founded Nightstone Unlimited together, but she had allowed Thailog to concentrate on running the business side of things while she devoted her attention to such things as Operation Clean Slate and the cloning of her own clan. Now, with Thailog gone, Demona had to run the practical side of the business as well, and unlike Thailog, she did not have the benefit of having business savvy pre-programmed in her brain. She'd had to learn it herself, and along the way, she'd made a few mistakes. As a result, Nightstone Unlimited had fallen well behind Cyberbiotics and Xanatos Enterprises in the markets. Now, Demona intended to even the odds a little by dealing a damaging blow to Xanatos' corporation.

"Yes," she said. "You are to break into the Eyrie Building and retrieve blueprints and plans for Xanatos Enterprise's latest projects. After you have taken all you can carry, I want you to destroy the entire sub basement area." She'd pirate the stolen designs, and as for the rest, well, Xanatos would just have to start from scratch, wouldn't he? The time delay would give Nightstone Unlimited a real market edge.

"Sounds like fun," Hyena said with a wicked glint in her eyes.

"Sub basement?" Jackal repeated.

"Yes. That is where their secret plans for upcoming projects are stored," Demona explained.

"So much for our rocket boosters, then," Hyena snorted, "but hey, come on, brother. We get to trash the rich man's place..."

"You're forgetting, sister, that the rich man is married to Fox, and they both have connections to those miserable gargoyles."

"What's a few gargoyles?" A set of pointed claws sprang from Hyena's fingertips.

Behind her, Dominique Destine frowned. These two hated her kind, just as all humans did--but unlike most humans, they were living weapons of destruction. She wanted Xanatos Enterprises to suffer a massive setback, but not at the risk of her daughter's life.

Jackal rubbed his chin and began to pace the floor. "Those gargoyles keep their eyes on Xanatos. The second we're in the building, we'll have a whole clan to deal with. I'm sure we can make mincemeat out of a few of them, but even the whole Pack couldn't take them all down, and I'm tired of being a gargoyle's punching bag."

"You won't have anything to worry about," Demona assured him, as a plan came into her mind. "At 10 pm tonight I will arrange for an explosion to occur in the Xanatos Enterprises warehouses down near the docks. The blast is certain to attract the attention of Goliath and his clan. While they are investigating the explosion, you two can strike at the true target--the Eyrie Building. I trust you'll be able to take care of a handful of security guards."

"We eat security guards for dinner," Jackal said smoothly.

"What about the rich man?" Hyena asked. "Davey and Fox are sure to show up."

"What _about_ him?" Dominique Destine replied sweetly. "It's most important that I get the blueprints," she stressed, "but if Xanatos isn't smart enough to stay out of the field of fire, well, that can't be helped, now can it?" Two grinning heads shook no.

***

In the Eyrie Building's master bedroom, Alex cast a spell he'd learned a few months ago. Fox's mirror shone, gave off swirls of light, and opened itself up as a window on the world. "Show me Vincent Gregarino," the Puck ordered, rubbing his hands together.

The mirror presented him with an image of Vinnie eating takeout Chinese at a fold-out table in a shabby little apartment. Puck sat down on a chair, scooping Alex into his lap. "Now, here's another lesson of magic. Sometimes you have to wait for the right moment. In this case, we have to wait until Vinnie is asleep."

Alex grabbed a storybook off the nearby bookshelf and held it under Puck's nose. "Read!"

Puck morphed into Owen, opened the first page of "The Story of Ferdinand" and settled in to pass the time.

***

After finishing his Chinese food, Vinnie opened up the storage room closet and carefully retrieved his prize possession. Mr. Carter was nestled in a large grey gym bag, ready to pie more unwary victims. As Vinnie struggled to lift the heavy pie gun, he remembered the first time he'd used it.

He'd followed two gargoyles, the big one and the old one, all night. They'd spent their time fighting some kind of werewolf creature and a floating axe. The werewolf had been really weird, but after a few encounters with gargoyles, a person's definition of "weird" got an awful lot stricter. Besides, Vinnie hadn't had any fight with the werewolf. It wasn't a werewolf that had kidnapped Anton Sevarius on Vinnie's shift. It wasn't a werewolf that had attacked Fortress One. It wasn't a werewolf that had stolen and wrecked Vinnie's motorcycle.

Vinnie sighed. He'd only recently gotten his driver's license back. He'd lost it for a year when he'd tried to defend his "careless driving" charge by telling the court that a little green gargoyle was the one responsible for the accident. The judge had thought he was intoxicated, and suspended his license!

Now, though, that was over. Vinnie brushed the last week's collection of sandwich wrappers and TV dinner trays off the kitchen counter and into the sink before laying the pie gun down in their place. He'd gotten his revenge on the big gargoyle. He remembered the satisfaction of hitting the creature in the face with a pie. He'd chucked the pie gun aside later, turned his back, and walked away, whistling an odd little tune that had come into his head--just like the action heroes in the movies always did.

~What _was_ that song anyway?~ Vinnie couldn't recall having ever heard it before...

Ah, well. He'd seen justice done. He'd been as smooth and as slick as the leading men in the movies--but he'd gone back for the pie gun the next morning, and returned it to the gym bag. It was the concrete proof of his triumph over the gargoyle.

Vinnie carefully pried open an access panel in the side of the pie gun and bypassed the fingerprint-ID lock he'd placed on the handle of the gun. Now anyone could fire it. Ordinarily, he didn't like that idea...Mr. Carter was his pride and joy...but Sophia... Yeah. Sophia was worth it. He grinned, figuring he'd take her down to the Eyrie Building's range after work that night and teach her how to shoot a pie.

To that end, he'd stopped off at the bakery and bought four of the cheapest pies he could find. They were leftovers that were going to be thrown in the garbage--he'd gotten them all for two dollars. There were three coconut creams and a banana custard. Vinnie smiled and loaded them into the pie gun.

He'd better not forget. He'd done stupid things before, been careless, been dumb...his own mother said he'd forget his head if it wasn't attached. He would not forget this. Not for Sophia.

Vinnie got his car keys and decided to put the pie gun in his trunk right now. Just in case, he got a package of Post-It notes out of an odds-and-ends drawer and wrote, in big red letters, DON'T FORGET THE GUN IN THE TRUNK. He'd put it on the dashboard where he couldn't possibly miss it.

***

Alex was sound asleep on his parents' bed when Owen looked up from his paperwork to steal a glance at the mirror and saw an image of Vinnie sound asleep in his bed. Owen glanced at the time--3:07 pm. Not an unusual sleeping time for someone who worked the night shift.

So, Vinnie was at rest. The sun in the sky guaranteed that Wagner would be sleeping as well, after his own fashion. The timing was right.

Owen spun around rapidly and, when he came to a stop, it was Puck that stood there in the center of the room. He gently shook Alex's shoulder. "Wake up, Alex! It's magic time!"

***

THREE HOURS, FORTY-SEVEN MINUTES LATER

~That was short.~ Wagner blinked his eyes, wondering how he could feel so exhausted after a day of stone sleep. He grabbed hold of his covers, rolled over on his side, and nuzzled deep into his pillow. Nice, not to be lying on any stone fragments...he hated having to dust them out of his bed each evening...

_No_ stone? No stone at all?

Wagner peered at his nightstand with bleary eyes. A large digital clock with huge red numbers glared back at him. 6:54.

He didn't _have_ an alarm clock. Gargoyles, as a rule, don't need them. Wagner sat bolt upright, his heart racing and his lungs tightening. Something was wrong. His eyes flew open and he got several more nasty shocks.

Not his night table. Not his covers. Not his bed.

The far wall _should_ be creamy white, with a framed painting of a Messerschmitt 109 hanging across from the bed. Instead, it was this terrible hospital green, and on it were several cheesy prints in frames that were falling apart at the corners. Tacky drapes from the 70's, not long black ones, were drawn across the windows.

This wasn't his room.

He bounded out of bed and hit the ground much sooner than he'd expected with the force of the jump he'd used. Wagner stumbled, catching himself just in time to avoid planting his face in the long shag carpet. ~Carpet?~ He looked again, judging that the rug had once been pink, even though it was now closer to field grey. Rather surprised at his sudden clumsiness, he raced through the bedroom door.

It wasn't his apartment, either. This living room was pretty much a dump, with several empty pizza boxes stacked in the corner, mismatched furniture that looked like it had come from yard sales, more drawn 70's drapes, and a cheap stereo system in the corner. Wagner looked around, wondering how he'd gotten here.

~First Avalon and now this...~ He felt a momentary spell of vertigo.

~I hope this isn't going to become a habit.~ He smiled ruefully, then shook off the thought. He scanned the apartment, but there were no signs of life, and furthermore, no signs of danger. Still, he couldn't afford not to be careful.

In the bedroom, the blaring ring of the alarm clock split the air. Wagner spun around, raising his arms defensively, ready to fight, until he realized what the sound was. He sprinted back the way he had come.

It took him a few moments to figure out how to turn the clock off. Seven pm...

_Seven?_

Hesitantly, Wagner approached the window and drew back the horrible brown and orange print drapes. The sky was far, far brighter than he'd ever seen it.

Daylight.

It was _daylight_.

Wagner resisted the urge to simply run outside and stare at the sky. He found a jacket in the closet and a sharp knife in a kitchen drawer. He threw on the jacket and slipped the knife into the pocket. ~It's not my gun, but it'll have to do,~ Wagner thought ruefully.

He forced himself to examine the corridors of the building carefully for danger before he stepped out and searched for the stairwell. That, too, was deserted. He frowned as he walked; for some reason he was very stiff and uncoordinated, almost as if he was fighting against his body. ~Probably the result of being awake in...daylight?~ Was it really daylight?

He ran into another person in the downstairs lobby--an elderly woman. Unarmed and not threatening, as far as he could tell. "Hello there, Vinnie," she said as Wagner dashed past.

Wagner was outside in seconds. The neighbourhood was unfamiliar, but from the newspapers in the box outside, he was still in New York and it was the same day he'd gone to sleep. ~Thank God for small favours,~ he snorted.

Wagner trotted down the street, turned the corner, and stopped dead in his tracks. He'd been born in 1891, but in all his life he'd never seen anything like...

The sun.

He watched the sun for a good half hour. He knew he was wasting time, probably foolishly, time he could better spend in learning what had happened to him, but he couldn't stop staring. Wagner blinked his eyes at last, seeing red and blue spots just like those he saw when he stared at a bright flashlight too long. ~I've got to figure out what's going on.~

"Hey, Vinnie, what'cha lookin' at?" Wagner turned his head and saw a middle-aged man dressed in a grey track suit.

"Me?" Wagner asked.

"Yeah. How many other Vinnies are here?" Wagner simply stared at him, and the jogger shook his head. "Never mind." He sprinted off.

Wagner turned around, making his way back to the apartment where he had awakened. The stiffness was not getting better. He carefully examined the building and its corridors, which seemed to be an apartment building like any other. ~Let's hope it's not the Apartments Cabal,~ he thought. ~If the Illuminati are behind this, they're in for the fight of their lives.~

But why would the Illuminati let him go out to see the sun? That didn't make any sense. _Nothing_ about this made any sense.

Wagner reached the apartment and began to examine it more carefully too. Same messy living room. Same little kitchen. Same tacky bedroom. And behind this door...well, it should be a bathroom, shouldn't it?

Wagner took one look at the face in the mirror, and screamed.

~Like the first time it's just like the first time...~

Once again, the face in the mirror was not his own.

The first time was in the 1930's. The Illuminati had cast some spells and hired a stonemason to carve Wagner's gargoyle features into those of a human man. He had screamed that night, to awaken and see his face with no chin spikes, no little horns, no large curling crest coming out of his forehead, no pointed ears. His hands had sported the nails of a human for the first time that night; his feet had no longer been those of a gargoyle, his wings had developed an extra row of joints to let them fold up behind his back. He remembered the sickening nausea when he had tried to move his tail, only to discover that it was no longer there.

"They've done it again!"

A new face. He'd gotten used to one. He could get used to another. Wagner forced himself to breathe deeply. He'd live. He'd live. ~I always live.~

~What about my wings?~

His wings often chafed and cramped when they were folded up under his clothing, and this track suit he found himself in was very tight across his back... He tried to tear his wings out of the sweater, only to find no response. ~No wings...God, no, not my wings!~

The pain in his heart was incredible. He tried to roar, but only a human cry came from his throat. He was mad with pain, but he could not feel his eyes lighting up. He tried to tear the towel rod out of the wall and failed to budge it.

~Wait a minute...~

Why didn't he have his gargoyle strength? His power was augmented by magic. What could have taken that away from him?

He looked in the mirror again. He always slept with his mouth shut, and yet, the teeth in the mirror were those of a human, not the fangs of a gargoyle.

~I'm in a human body.~ He thought a moment, and spoke.

"I'm, like, in a human body!"

The voice was not his own, and where had that "like" come from? He tried to say it again with his regular German accent. He couldn't.

This was _definitely_ not his body.

Maybe this was reversible. He needed only to find those responsible, and force them to turn him back...yes, that was what he'd do. The first thing was to find those who had done this to him.

His gaze fell, and he noticed something unusual sitting beside the sink. It was a photo identification tag of the sort often worn by security guards. The picture on the tag was identical to the face in the mirror. The name said VINCENT GREGARINO, and the logo on the tag was that of Xanatos Enterprises.

~Is this who I'm supposed to be?~ Wagner cursed, and was surprised when something in Italian came out.

~Or...is this who I've somehow _become_?~

Wagner paced back into the bedroom, tearing the top drawer out of the battered desk. Wallet. Chequebook. Credit cards. Passport. All in the name of Vincent Gregarino.

He'd adopted personas before. He'd been given the documentation to support those pseudonyms. But it had never been anything like this. This time, it was as if Vinnie Gregarino had somehow been picked up out of his life, out of his _body_, and Wagner's mind deposited there instead...

~So if _I'm_ in Vinnie's body, is _Vinnie_ in _mine_?~

~Oh, Jesus.~

~Random human will wake up at sunrise in my apartment with superhuman augmented strength, magically enhanced reflexes, and wings.~ The thought of a stranger in his own private lair disturbed Wagner, but what bothered him more was the arsenal of weapons he had in his home. He tried to assure himself that Vinnie was a security guard, not a criminal. The odds of his body's new owner being some kind of psychotic nut that would wreak havoc on the city now that he had the abilities of a gargoyle were very low...weren't they?

~Serves me right for the havoc I've wreaked in my time.~ That was not a comfort.

~I have to get to my apartment as quickly as I can.~

He was almost to the door when another thought struck him. ~It's stupid for me to rush out of here too quickly. How will I get there?~

His thoughts seemed to be coming slowly, and he finally figured out why. Vinnie's brain was wired to think in English. Wagner thought in his mother tongue, German. It took him a while to mentally translate ideas into English, connect them, and translate them back to German. Furthermore, there was the odd Italian word floating around in there...it was as if a residue of Vinnie's thoughts remained behind in his brain.

Maybe he could access those thoughts. Wagner thought, ~Driver's license. Have I got one?~

Almost of its own accord, his hand..._Vinnie's_ hand...reached into the wallet's top pocket and withdrew one. Wagner frowned. The license was just newly reinstated.

~Car keys?~ It came to him in a flash that they were...jeans? Something about jeans. This thought-access process was not very accurate. For that reason, Wagner decided that it would be best to trust his own instincts and leave picking Vinnie's brain to emergencies.

There were several pairs of jeans strewn around Vinnie's apartment. Wagner searched through three pairs before he found the ones with the keys in the pocket. Next, he checked Vinnie's wallet, finding a hundred dollars cash in addition to the credit cards. Yeah, he was good to go.

Minutes later, Wagner walked out the front door of the apartment building. "Hello, Vinnie," greeted an older gentleman on his way in.

Wagner decided to reply with a casual "Hi."

"Teaching yourself German, now, are you?" the man asked.

Wagner winced and cursed inside his head. What he'd actually said was "Guten abend" in very heavily accented German.

"Yeah," he said, his voice shaken. The old man, however, did not react as if anything unusual had occurred. He continued on his way.

~Hmph...they must expect weirdness from Mr. Vinnie,~ Wagner thought to himself.

Wagner stepped out of the apartment building, and halted in his tracks, perhaps against his better judgement, to watch the sun set.

***

In an apartment across town, Vinnie Wagner awoke with a crackling of stone.

Vinnie shook his head, blinking sleepily. He'd slept like a rock. There was something hard and pointy in his bed, and he was lying on it. Crumbs, most likely. "No more chow mein in bed for me," he muttered.

Vinnie stumbled out of bed, heading for the bathroom. His feet followed the same pattern as always, across the room, out the door, into the hall, into the...

SMACK!

Vinnie staggered backwards. He shouldn't have hit a wall! The bathroom door was supposed to be right there beside the... He fumbled for the light switch, finally finding one on the opposite side of the hall from where he'd first thought to look.

~Wait a minute.~

That wasn't _his_ wall he had hit.

Vinnie turned around, suddenly more awake than he'd ever been in his life. The bedroom he'd just come out of wasn't his, either. For some reason he didn't really need the light switch to illuminate this strange room. The walls were creamy white. There was a painting of a WWII fighter plane on the far wall. The drapes were black and drawn back to reveal the night sky.

"Night? How long have I slept?" Vinnie muttered, in a thickly-accented voice, which he assumed was distorted by sleep. "Geez, I'm gonna be late for work!"

~Vurk???~

What he'd actually _said_ was, "Mein Gott, I'm ghoingk to be late fur vurk!"

He tried to say "work" again. "Vurk. Vurk. Vurk." It reminded him of Colonel Klink.

Vinnie looked down at himself and noticed that he was already dressed in a black T-shirt and a pair of jeans. He tore open the bedroom closet, but there was no Xanatos Enterprises uniform. There was, however, a host of other clothes that weren't his own...including a vintage 1940's German uniform and pair of jackboots.

"Whoa, did I wander into someone else's apartment by mistake?" His voice was still accented, and he couldn't quite believe the Nazi uniform in the closet. "No more bad war movies before bed either!"

Vinnie opened the apartment door, checking to see if he'd wandered into his neighbour's room, only to be greeted by a hallway he'd never seen before in his life.

"Oh, man...."

~Facts, Vinnie my man. This is not a time to freak. This is a time for facts. Here's a fact: If you're late for work, you will get fired. Fi-ered. Just get dressed, go to work, and figure this out later, okay?~

Vinnie thought he might as well borrow the guy's bathroom. He still didn't need a light switch--for some reason, even in the dark, his vision was awfully clear. The first thing he noticed was what was on the counter...and what wasn't. No razor. No soap. No shampoo. No toothbrush. Just a very deadly-looking handgun.

"Oh, geez," Vinnie mumbled, and raised his eyes to the mirror.

The face was bad enough. Maybe someone'd played a prank on him, cutting his hair, dying it blond, giving him blue contacts. He could almost convince himself to accept that explanation. There was nothing to explain the black wings, tipped with little clawed hands, that rose above his head and fell in sweeping folds behind his back.

~I'm turnin' into a gargoyle.~

With that thought, Vinnie Gregarino fainted dead away.


	2. Chapter 2

**Wagner's Vendetta**

**Chapter the Second (of three)**

~Oh, God.~ Even the beauty of the sunset couldn't block its implications from Wagner's mind. "If _I'm_ Vinnie and Vinnie's _me_, then Vinnie just woke up as a gargoyle...Mein Gott. I _have_ to get over there _right now_!~

Wagner pulled out Vinnie's keys and examined them. No auto-maker's logo was stamped into the keys; no dealer's name was written on the worn leather key holder. He surveyed the parking lot ruefully. ~Nothing for it. I'll just have to try the doors of every vehicle until I find one that opens.~ Feeling like an idiot, Wagner tried the key in the door of the nearest vehicle, a shiny red Chevrolet Beretta. Nothing.

Wagner's eyes darted around the parking lot, checking for passersby. His night had been bad enough without getting charged with attempted auto theft on top of it. He proceeded to try an AstroVan, a Mercury Cougar, and a Honda Civic with no luck. Wagner tried to curse under his breath; a rather nasty-sounding word in a foreign language came out. Italian, he guessed. Great.

Wagner rounded the next vehicle, a Pontiac Sunfire, and found his clumsy human body tripping on the curb. He leaned against the front of the Pontiac to catch himself from falling. ~What kind of a schmuck is this Vinnie guy?~

Wagner examined the long row of cars ahead of him. He'd be here all night if he tried the door of each of them. He tried to guess what kind of car someone like Vinnie Gregarino might drive.

Down at the end of the row slouched a battered-up K-car which had once been painted a sickening snot-green, though most of the paint had rusted off. Wagner had a sudden flash of insight and smacked his forehead with his hand. "Wunderbar," he muttered, his thoughts coming out in German this time, although the voice had a terrible English accent.

He knew the keys would open the K-car before he even put one in the lock. Inside, the vehicle didn't look a whole lot better. The seats vomited stuffing, and there was a huge pile of takeout cartons in the passenger seat, everything from McDonald's and Taco Bell to Chinese and falafel. The car seemed to be held together with duct tape. Wagner considered looking under the hood, and then thought better of it. He sat down gingerly in the vehicle, the driver's seat tilting backwards under his weight as the rusted floor threatened to give way.

DON'T FORGET THE GUN IN THE TRUNK. Big red letters screamed up at him from the Post-It note in the middle of the steering wheel.

~Gun?~ What kind of guy was this Vinnie? What kind of gun? And who would leave a big note to tell anyone walking by that he had a firearm in his vehicle?

Wagner shrugged. He'd check it out later. Right now, he had to find his body. He turned the key in the K-car's ignition.

The engine whined in protest and finally sputtered to life. "Mein Gott, it works!" He could only cringe at the Anglicization of the German words.

Surprisingly, the radio worked too. "Next up is "Dangerous" by Roxette," the announcer proclaimed. The song he heard over the radio made him snort.

You pack your bag, you take control.  
You're moving into my heart, and into my soul.  
Get out of my way! Get out of my sight!  
I won't be walking on thin ice to get through the night.  
Hey, where's your work? What's your game?  
I know your business but I don't know your name..."

"Well," Wagner Gregarino said, "I'm going to move my soul out of Mr. Vinnie as soon as I can!"

***

It took Wagner several minutes of driving and searching for street signs to find out exactly where in the city he was. After getting his bearings, he pulled into a convenience store parking lot, bought a map (the one in the K-car had a large section of town obliterated by an ancient stain that might have been caused by ketchup) and then, Wagner figured out how to get to his place from the store.

During the wild drive across town, Wagner found himself laying on the horn a lot--almost as much as he found himself praying that the K-car wouldn't suddenly up and stall in traffic with no warning. "I want my Mercedes!" he cried aloud for the millionth time.

Finally, Wagner turned the K-car into the lot of his own apartment building. He parked it, ironically, right beside his own black Mercedes. He had no key to the front door, but there were ways around that. He buzzed the intercom number of the apartment next to his.

"Yes?" a male voice answered.

"Hello, Mr. Yale," he said, trying to sound like his normal self. "It's Wagner--Richard Wagner. I, uh, forgot my keys. Can you lemme in?" He winced as that "lemme" slipped out.

"Sure," Brendan Yale mumbled, pressing the button that unlocked the front door.

"I've got to talk to them about security in this place," Wagner muttered as he took the elevator up to the top floor. He noticed that his new voice was emotional and shaky, unlike his old one. Wagner had spent his entire life trying to keep that cold edge out of his everyday speech. Now he missed it.

He stalked down the hall towards his apartment...at least as well as he could make Vinnie's body stalk, which really wasn't all that well. This body was far more suited to such activities as tripping on the carpet, which he did a few times. ~Herr Gregarino couldn't intimidate a housefly!~ Wagner thought to himself, relieved that at least his _thoughts_ still had a powerful edge behind them.

Wagner pounded on his door, disgusted at the pitiful amount of strength he could force out of Vinnie's arm. No response. He pressed his ear to the door and listened, but the apartment was silent. He banged on the door again. "Vinnie!" he yelled. "Vinnie, open up!" More banging.

The door down the hall opened, and that annoying blond neighbour of his stuck her head out. "Keep the noise down!" Margot snapped. "Other people have to live here too."

"I need to talk to him," Wagner said, trying to look stern and succeeding in looking like a schmuck. Margot replied by slamming the door.

"Vinnie!" he called, banging on the door again. "Open up! I can help you!"

Margot's door swung open. "There's no one there named Vinnie, and if you don't keep quiet, I'm going to call building security!" Her door slammed again, this time so hard that he felt the tremor in the floorboards.

~Great. Well, I'll go around the outside and...~

~No _wings_, genius. You aren't going in the balcony doors like this.~

Wagner sighed. ~I guess it's the Eyrie for me, then. Maybe Aashlee and Brooklyn will help.~

***

Demona peered out from under the hooded cloak she wore. Placing several bricks of C-4 plastic explosive with timers around Xanatos' warehouses was easy; there was hardly anyone on the docks tonight. Demona covered the explosives with litter and empty crates just in case an odd security guard was snooping around. There was no point in taking chances.

The effectiveness of the explosives really wasn't an issue. Damaging Xanatos' warehouses wouldn't hurt him nearly as much as what Jackal and Hyena would do. All she had to do was distract Xanatos and the gargoyles from the site of her true attack. The C-4, she judged, should do that just fine.

***

Sophia looked up with a puzzled expression on her face as Vinnie Gregarino walked through the Eyrie Building's main doors and right past her. He was wearing a pair of ripped jeans and a T-shirt, not his usual work uniform. Aside from that, though, Vinnie looked much the same as he did any other night: the same tousled hair, the same lanky frame, the same boyish gait. Tonight, though, an ironic little smile was playing around his lips. Sophia had never seen Vinnie with that expression before.

"Vinnie! Wait up!" she called.

Vinnie wheeled around sharply to face her. No casual "Uh, how's it goin', Soph?" No blushing and staring at the floor. He did stumble a little as his body came around, but overall, the movement was most un-Vinnie-like. She examined his face, and noticed something unusual in his eyes. He was examining her closely, as if sizing her up. Vinnie's eyes were far more alert than usual, their gaze almost confrontational. His usual warm, open expression (it always reminded her of a puppy) had changed into something hard and cold.

"Vinnie? Are you all right?" Sophia asked hesitantly.

Wagner examined her. ~Co-worker,~ he judged. ~He does work here...ach, scheiss, he's probably supposed to be on shift now!~

~Sophia!~ The thought was not his own. ~Gee, she's pretty...~

"Sophia?" he said softly.

"What is it?" she answered.

~That's his thoughts,~ Wagner decided. ~Vinnie's thoughts.~ He snickered to himself. ~Vinnie likes her.~ Then, he abruptly sobered up. ~I can't let her know what's happened.~

"I'm sorry," he said, resting his forehead in his palm. "I'm just...not feeling like myself tonight."

~Boy, is _that_ the understatement of the year,~ Wagner thought to himself.

Sophia bustled over and took his arm. "Are you sure you're all right?" she asked with concern. "Maybe you should take the night off."

"Actually, I've got to see Mr. Xanatos. It's really important."

"Gregarino!" A large, burly man stomped over. "You're late! Again. Where's your uniform? You're getting five demerit points for this, buster, and if you screw up one more time this week, you are FIRED!"

Wagner snapped to attention. "Sorry, sir. It won't happen again, sir."

The supervisor raised an eyebrow. Vinnie might be late, and out of uniform, but he'd never sounded so sharp. This Vinnie reminded him of an army recruit.

"Yeah, well, it better not. Get a uniform from supply, and bring it back tomorrow," he grouched, and stomped away.

***

Wagner paced impatiently, waiting for the other guards to be distracted. He'd been polite but distant towards Sophia, and finally excused himself, saying he had a headache and needed a little time to himself. The second no one was paying attention to him, he jumped in the elevator and pressed the button for the top floor of the Eyrie.

***

Hudson was easy to find. One simply listened for the sound of the television and followed it to its source. Tonight, Hudson was not alone in the T.V. room; Aashlee and Brooklyn were sitting side-by-side on the couch, holding hands and talking to one another. Wagner peeked his head in the door. "Hudson?"

Brooklyn's head came up and around to look at him. "Uh, guys? Don't look now, but we've got company." He jumped to his feet, wings spreading defensively.

"You again!" Hudson gasped, recognizing Vinnie Gregarino.

"You know him?" Aashlee asked.

"Aye. You're the one who hit Goliath with a cream pie."

"It's me, Wagner!" the scraggly young man said. "Hudson, I'm in the body of someone called Vinnie Gregarino!"

Aashlee tilted her head comically. "Vati?"

"Yeah, yeah. What do I have to do to prove it?"

"Who's the leader of the Illuminati?" Brooklyn asked.

"Mephistopheles von Sturm."

"When did you adopt me?" Aashlee chimed in.

"1944." Technically, Aashlee was only 38 gargoyle years old. She'd been frozen in stone from 1945 to 1975. No one would guess that year from her physical age.

Hudson nodded. "How many have ye killed in your lifetime?"

The young man's face grew cold, his eyes gleaming with anger. "I'll never tell," he growled, "and I have no idea what makes you think you know the answer."

The old gargoyle turned to Brooklyn. "That's our Wagner."

Aashlee's face wore an expression of disbelief. "What happened?"

"I wish I knew, liebchen." Wagner's frame sagged against the wall. "I woke up--at 7 pm, no less--like this. In the body of Vincent "Vinnie" Gregarino. I can't get into my apartment and I'm afraid that Vinnie is somehow stuck in _my_ body."

"Invasion of the Body Swappers," Brooklyn cracked.

"There's nothing funny about this," Wagner hissed. "I have no idea what Vinnie's up to with my body."

"We'll go over and check it out," Aashlee pledged. "Come on."

As Brooklyn and Aashlee took off for Wagner's apartment, the gargoyle-turned-human flopped down on the sofa and asked, "Where is everyone?" Wagner really didn't want the griffin to see him like this.

"Angela took Bronx to the park for some exercise," Hudson explained, "and Lexington is on patrol with Broadway. Griff and Goliath went to Elisa's, to visit her before she had to go on duty."

"Duty!" Wagner groaned. "Vinnie's supposed to be on security duty at the front doors. I suppose I'd better return his body to his post." Wagner dragged himself..._Vinnie's_ self...to his feet and limped his way down the hall.

"Never a dull moment," Hudson mumbled under his breath.

***

Aashlee punched in the numerical code, and Wagner's balcony door whirred as the mechanism unlocked. The female gargoyle cast a glance over her shoulder at Brooklyn, who was perched on Wagner's balcony railing, and then tentatively slid the door open.

Wagner's apartment was silent. It looked much as it always did--a comfortable couch, ornamental beer stein in a convenient place on the end table, a desk with several sheafs of paper on it, the music to Beethoven's Fur Elise on the piano in the corner, a tidy dinner table, and a tastefully displayed collection of WWII memorabilia.

Something, however, was not quite right. The living room and kitchen were in darkness, but the hall light was lit. Brooklyn and Aashlee advanced cautiously, even though the apartment sounded deserted.

"Cover the hall," Aashlee whispered to Brooklyn as she darted to the well-locked store room where Wagner kept his personal arsenal. She gave the door a quick once-over. Undamaged. She keyed the code pad and peeked inside. Nothing seemed to have been touched; the weapons were arrayed the same as they always were. Just in case, she picked up one of Wagner's Luger handguns, loaded it, and closed the door again, depressing the LOCK button.

"I thought you swore off weapons," Brooklyn said as he saw what his girlfriend carried in her hand. It had taken the clan several months to get Aashlee to accept that gargoyles should not carry firearms, not merely for tradition's sake, but also because armed gargoyles would certainly provoke more fear and resentment from the humans of the city. She had seen the logic of this argument, and, having never lived with a clan before, she had been willing to adopt this custom. Wagner was something else again. Brooklyn supposed that if he had as many enemies as Wagner, he would probably carry a gun around too.

"Yeah," Aashlee answered, "but I'm not taking any chances now." She looked at the expression of concern on Brooklyn's face. "I'll leave the safety on if it'll make you feel better."

"Okay," Brooklyn agreed, and side by side they crept down the hall.

In Wagner's bedroom, the bed was unmade, the covers thrown back by someone evidently in a hurry. Chips of stone skin were scattered across the mattress. "Our friend was here, all right," Aashlee whispered. "Vati always cleans the stone out of his bed."

"Great. He's probably gone."

"Then how will we find him?" she demanded, a little louder. "He could be anywhere in the city!"

That was when a low moan came from the direction of the bathroom. The two gargoyles jumped and looked back over their shoulders. Cautiously, they proceeded towards the bathroom. Brooklyn pushed the door in while Aashlee covered him with the handgun, ready to flick off the safety and pull the trigger...

Another groan. There was Wagner, lying on the floor, wings crumpled beneath him, rubbing the back of his head with his hand and looking very dazed. A large bruise was forming on the side of his face.

"Vati?" Aashlee whispered, letting the gun barrel sag to point at the floor.

The confused eyes fixed on them. "AAUGH! Gargoyles!" Vinnie cried, scrambling backwards. His hand rested on the enamel of the bathtub ledge. The enamel was slick and his hand slipped, dumping him over backwards into the tub. His head hit the cold water handle and a spray of icy water began to descend on him.

Brooklyn peered into the bathtub and turned the water off.

"Don't hurt me, please, just go away," Vinnie whimpered.

"What have you done to my father?" Aashlee snapped.

Vinnie peeked up at her. "I dunno! I didn't do nothing!" Just then he caught a glimpse of a long black wing..._his_ wing. Vinnie screamed. Brooklyn rolled his eyes.

"Change me back," Vinnie pleaded as he scrambled to his knees in the slippery wet tub, scrabbling on all fours to keep from slipping. "I'll do anything, please, just change me ba-a-ack!" Tears streamed from the corners of his eyes as he looked pleadingly up at Aashlee and Brooklyn. "I swear I'll never say nothin' bad about gargoyles ever again!"

"We didn't do this," Aashlee snapped. "But if I ever find out who did..." Her eyes started to redden and she tightened her grip on the gun.

Vinnie gasped and jerked his body--~actually, it's Wagner's body,~ Brooklyn thought--backwards. "Aash, put the gun down," Brooklyn murmured. She looked at him, but obeyed, sliding the Luger into the pocket of her cutoff denim shorts.

Brooklyn took Vinnie's trembling hands in his. Vinnie flinched, but did not pull away. "Right now," Brooklyn said quietly, "you are in the body of Aashlee's father. Her father is in your body."

"Wha?" Vinnie asked, trying to assimilate this information. "You mean, I'm in a gargoyle's body..."--~I know that,~ he thought--"...but a _gargoyle_ is in _my_ body? Right now?"

Brooklyn nodded yes. "I don't know who did this," the beaked gargoyle said, "but we're going to find out, and we're going to get you back in your proper bodies."

Aashlee continued to stare at her father's body. The wide-eyed expression of puzzlement in the eyes was completely out of place, and she had never thought that Wagner's face was capable of registering such bewilderment. The man who now had possession of Wagner's body could not possibly be a threat. "Trust us," she murmured, "we aren't going to do anything to hurt you. We want things back to normal, just like you do."

As Brooklyn helped Vinnie out of the tub, Aashlee said, "I don't suppose you can use those wings?"

"You mean...fly? Like flap 'em, and fly?" His face went white.

"That would be a no," Brooklyn said sarcastically.

"Great," Aashlee replied, just as sarcastically. "We can't exactly walk down the hall and out the front door like this. You would not _believe_ the two losers who moved in next door."

"Wagner...uh...what _is_ your name?" Brooklyn asked.

"Vinnie," Wagner-Vinnie said weakly.

"Okay, Vinnie. If you can find your way out to the parking lot, we'll meet you there."

***

Three. Two. One.

Under an abandoned crate, lying beside Xanatos Enterprises warehouse 3B, at the docks near the river, the timer hit zero.

BOOM! The explosives went off almost simultaneously, and the glass in other warehouse windows shattered for a half mile in all directions. Terrified citizens phoned police, all reporting the same thing--the warehouses were in flames.

Goliath and Griff were swooping down to land on the top of the Eyrie Building. Hudson ran out of the castle to greet them. "Goliath!" he called. "We've got a problem..."

BOOM!

"What was that?" Hudson cried.

"It sounds just like the Blitz," Griff said, "except there's no aircraft engines."

Hudson's head turned automatically in the direction of the explosion. Smoke and a telltale glow were clearly visible from their vantage point. "The warehouses. Near the river," Hudson responded. Wagner's difficulty had temporarily slipped from his mind.

Goliath spread his great wings. "Broadway and Lexington are on the other side of town. So is the park where Angela took Bronx. Let's go!"

As they took to the sky, Hudson said, "What about Brooklyn and Aashlee? They went over to Wagner's."

"Have they got a radio?"

"I don't think so, lad."

"Then we have no means of getting in contact with them and we haven't got time to go there and get them. We must get to the warehouse."

"Goliath, Wagner's in a great difficulty."

"Let him deal with it himself then," Griff snapped. "People might need us at the warehouses and I'm not going to waste my time on a murderer anyway."

"What manner of difficulty?" Goliath asked.

"He's been magically transformed into a human," Hudson replied.

"Is he hurt?"

"No. Closer to annoyed."

On Goliath's left, Griff was snickering. "I say, that must look good on him."

Goliath ignored the griffin. "As long as Wagner is not in danger, his problem can wait. We have something more serious to deal with now."

***

Vinnie looked around the parking lot nervously. There was a sudden rush of wings, and he jumped. There beside him were the two gargoyles he had seen in the apartment--the red beaked one, who had devil-like horns, long white hair, a long tail, and wore a loincloth, and the white female, who wore a somewhat more substantial pink crop top, denim shorts, and a cropped denim jacket. Her hair, shorter than the male's, was shoulder length and bright pink in colour, with a pale turquoise streak coming down from each temple. Vinnie supposed that if it wasn't for her short, back-curving horns, four-clawed feet, and the little stubby tail that fell to her knees, he might mistake her for a human teenager.

The female reached for him, and reflexively he shook to see the clawed hand coming his way. He noticed that her little finger on this hand had been amputated, and, unlike the red male, she had as many fingers as a human. She thrust her hand into his jacket pocket--well, actually the jacket belonged to the body's owner--and retrieved a set of car keys.

"We're good to go," Aashlee said.

"You know how to drive?" Brooklyn asked, impressed.

Aashlee nodded, putting the key in the driver's door of a shining black 1998 Mercedes-Benz.

"Aash," Brooklyn said, "are you sure we should do this?" Wagner's car looked very new and very, very lovingly cared for.

"Vinnie can't fly and we can hardly walk back to the Eyrie looking like this," Aashlee argued.

"Yeah, well, I guess you got a point," Brooklyn conceded, and clambered into the back seat of the Mercedes.

Vinnie settled himself into the passenger seat of Wagner's vehicle. "Hey, nice car," he said, looking around.

"I'd _rather_ take his 1940 staff car," Aashlee muttered, "but he parks that at Macbeth's."

"Wagner would go ballistic!" Brooklyn laughed. "He'd never let you drive his staff car. Lex popped the hood once, and oh, man, you shoulda seen Wagner's face! Lex thought he was gonna shoot him!"

"Yeah, well, we have a good excuse for doing this. You guys have to defend me, okay?" She grinned widely and started the engine.

Brooklyn's face abruptly fell. "You mean you've never done this before?" he demanded. "I thought you said you know how to drive!"

"A motorcycle," she retorted.

"A motorcycle's not the same as a car," Vinnie said, finally getting up the nerve to talk to the gargoyles of his own volition.

"Cars have wheels, right? They have motors and gas pedals and headlights, right? It can't be _that_ hard. Humans do it all the time."

"Vinnie?" Brooklyn asked.

"Yeah?"

"It was nice knowing you."

"Um...yeah. Thanks. You, too."

"!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" Vinnie and Brooklyn screamed in unison as Aashlee threw the car in reverse and stamped on the gas, swinging the wheel around. The front of the Mercedes nosed into the driver's door of the Lexus parked on the left hand side while the bumper of a jeep scraped a line down the Mercedes' body.

Wagner's car rocketed backwards into traffic, narrowly missing a taxicab who swerved around the Mercedes just in time. The car's machinery squealed and the vehicle jerked wildly as Aashlee threw the still-moving car into first. A van driver laid on the horn; his companion leaned out the window to give Aashlee the finger. Aashlee rolled down the window and stuck her head out, hissing at the man with her eyes glowing red. The man's finger drooped and he hastily withdrew back into his own vehicle.

"Slow down!" Brooklyn hollered. ~Never thought I'd say that, but...~

"We've got to get there quickly!" Aashlee retorted, sticking her head back between the front seats to glare at him.

"Watch where you're going!" Vinnie gasped.

"Gentlemen," she said between clenched teeth, "welcome to the Aashlee Express."

***

The doors opened, and two hooded figures came in from off the street. "May I help you?" the guard on duty at the desk asked politely. Beside him, two other guards reached for their clubs. Mr. Xanatos had many odd visitors, but those concealing capes disturbed the guards. These two could be hiding something.

"No," said a smooth, sliding male voice. "We'll just help ourselves."

"Yeah," added the other. This one was female, harsh and unpleasant to the ear. "Which way to the sub basement?"

"The sub basement requires a security pass," the guard said firmly.

"Well, now, isn't that too bad," said the male figure. An odd red light shone from under his hood.

"We make our own security passes!" cried the female, throwing off her cape.

Her hair was short and spiky, except for two long tufts in front of her ears. Her lips were blood red. Her clothing--a crop top, long pants and boots, long gloves that reached her shoulders--was made of some kind of gold metallic material. She stepped forward, and Wagner could hear the whirring of gears. No, not metallic material--metal. Her limbs were made of metal. Her stomach, shoulders and face were flesh.

The second one threw off his cloak as well. He had the same metal limbs as the female, plus a metal-plated torso. He also boasted a red cybernetic eye. His hair, though shorter on top, was similar to his companion's. In fact, their flesh components bore a family resemblance.

"What _are_ they?" Sophia asked.

~Trouble,~ Wagner thought. "Get back!" he cried to Sophia, with only a slight hesitation before the words made their way out of Vinnie's mouth.

"Stop those things!" the head guard ordered, drawing his club and advancing.

"We have to sound the alarm," Sophia said with determination, running towards the front desk console.

Hyena dodged the swing of the head guard's club, picked him up, and threw him into his two charging compatriots, sending them all flying against the wall. "Strike!" she yelled, and laughed maniacally.

"Mr. Xanatos," Sophia gasped into the intercom.

"Mr. Xanatos is away on business at the moment," Owen's voice came back.

"I'm gettin' out of here!" yelped the last guard, running for the door.

"Leaving so soon?" Jackal asked mockingly, and lashed out with his left foot. At first glance, it seemed that the fleeing man was out of range--but then Jackal's leg telescoped out to twice its original length and tripped the guard, sending him sprawling across the floor. Jackal's arm telescoped out too, picked the man up, and tossed him on top of his fallen compatriots.

"Two robot creatures," Sophia gasped. "We can't stop them! Call the police and send help!"

Having taken care of the active resistance, Jackal's eyes scanned the room and focused on Sophia. "No one likes a tattle tale," he hissed.

Wagner placed himself--or rather, Vinnie's body--between Jackal and Sophia. "Don't touch her," Wagner snapped.

"And how do you think you're going to stop me?" he asked. Wagner pulled Vinnie's kitchen knife from his pocket, holding it defensively, and Jackal laughed.

The elevator doors pinged open. Hyena took one look at the figure standing there and burst out laughing. "Well, now, if it isn't our fearless leader."

"Jackal. Hyena," Fox growled. She was dressed in a sweater and jeans, but her eyes had all the fierceness of a mother bear protecting its cubs. "Get out of my building."

"Your building?" Jackal asked. "You wouldn't have any of this if your rich husband hadn't have given it to you."

"Yeah," Hyena retorted. "And that means we have just as much right to it as you do."

"This is _my_ home," Fox replied, her eyes narrowing.

"I thought we used to be a team," Jackal replied, "and being a team means you share--though I suppose you wouldn't know about that. Not if it's more convenient to leave us in jail while you married your prince and moved into a castle in the clouds."

"You left us to rot," Hyena snapped, "and you're going to be sorry!" She growled and popped her arms into spider-mode. Moments later, razor-sharp claws lashed the space where Fox had stood. Fox, however, was no longer there. She jumped into the air, dodging the swipe, and descended with one leg thrust out, knocking Hyena over backwards with a kick.

Sophia, meanwhile, had been fumbling with a code on the lowest drawer of the front desk. She finally got it to open. "Vinnie! Catch!" she called, and threw something his way.

It fell a few feet short and skittered across the floor. Wagner recognized the type instantly. Beretta 9 mm handgun. Not his personal weapon of choice, but a gun was a gun. Sophia's next toss was a box of ammunition, which Wagner loaded into the gun as quickly as Vinnie's trembling hands would allow. He cursed this human body. When the gun was loaded, he afforded himself a quick look up.

Fox, Wagner judged, was doing well. ~But I wouldn't put any money on her. Maybe in an exo-frame, but not in a sweater and jeans, not against these two.~

Jackal had left Fox to Hyena for the moment and was advancing towards Sophia. "Well," Wagner said under his breath, "let's see if we can even the odds some." He raised his arm, taking the male cyborg in his sights. Jackal looked him in the eye and curled his lip up in a snarl.

He had a clear shot. So...why was he having so much trouble lining up on his target? His gun hand was shaking and refused to stay still. Wagner struggled with Vinnie's arm, trying to hold the Beretta steady. Jackal crouched, preparing to spring. Wagner closed Vinnie's eyes and fired.

He forced an eye open immediately, just in time to see a puff of concrete behind the cyborg.

Missed.

~I _missed_??~

Wagner couldn't remember the last time he'd completely missed a target that was so close. ~How could I have missed a shot like that?~

"Whoa, how'd I miss that?" came out of Vinnie's mouth.

~Never mind. You missed. That's fact. Deal with it and decide what to do now!~

Jackal was coming up on him fast, a nasty set of sharp blades protruding from his fingers. Wagner squeezed off a shot, aiming for Jackal's heart--or at least, the area where a human being's heart would be. The bullet simply bounced off the metal plating that covered Jackal's shoulder. He laughed and clawed out at him.

~I can't shoot!~ Wagner was close to panic; his greatest defense had suddenly gone without warning. Wagner tried to run, but Vinnie's clumsy feet caught the edge of the carpet and stumbled. The accident saved him, as Jackal's claws whistled above his head.

"Leave him alone, you monster!" Sophia cried, tearing the desk phone free of its cord and pitching it at Jackal. It struck him on the side of the head.

"Ow!" the cyborg complained, leaving Wagner-Vinnie time to scramble to his feet and run to Sophia's side.

Fox, meanwhile, was fighting bravely, but she knew she wouldn't be getting any backup. ~Of all the nights for Bruno to take the Xanatos Corporate Guard out on maneuvers...and where are those miserable gargoyles when we need them?~ She ducked a slash from Hyena's buzz-saw arms and delivered a kick to her former teammate's unarmoured stomach. ~I have to keep fighting...and hope the gargoyles get here in time.~

Jackal was advancing again. Wagner yelled and charged to meet him. As Jackal approached, Wagner took hold of the cyborg's left arm and dropped to a crouch, hoping that Jackal's momentum would cause him to flip right over Wagner's back.

Unfortunately, Vinnie's body wasn't half as strong as Wagner's gargoyle one. All Wagner succeeded in doing was pulling Jackal downwards, causing the cyborg to miss a step and stop his charge. Wagner looked up to see Jackal leering down at him.

~Uh-oh.~ Wagner's stomach dropped. He struck out desperately with the kitchen knife, but it bounced harmlessly off the metal of Jackal's arm.

The next moment, Wagner was flying through the air as if gravity had suddenly taken the day off. Wagner's brain sent out a signal to spread his wings and lessen the fall, but Vinnie's body had no wings to obey the command. Wagner landed against the wall with a thud.

~Now I know how the other side feels...uuugh.~ The world went gray, and Wagner struggled not to lose consciousness completely.

Fox and Hyena had been trading blows, taking turns throwing one another to the ground. It had most recently been Hyena's turn, and the female cyborg was still struggling to untangle her limbs when Jackal took hold of Sophia's shoulder. Sophia struggled, but she could not break his hold. Jackal's eyes lit up like a young boy about to torture a cat. He let three long blades slide out of his fingers.

"Never thought I'd be a hero again," Fox muttered as she lashed out with her foot and clipped Jackal behind the knees. He staggered, releasing Sophia. The security guard retreated around the desk, snatching a club from one of her fallen compatriots as she went.

Unfortunately, Fox had still been distracted when Hyena got to her feet. Hyena seized her from behind and threw her headfirst into the wall. "Don't worry, I'm sure your husband will pay for any damage done," Hyena snarled. She surveyed her former teammate. "Or buy himself a new wife." Her maniacal laugh split the room.

"Mrs. Xanatos!" Sophia gasped, feeling like a failure. Her job was to protect this building and its occupants. As Hyena sauntered over to Fox, clicking her claws, Sophia hurled the club and struck Hyena in the head. The club made a distinct tinny sound when it hit. Sophia's feeling of elation at her direct hit turned to fear as a very angry Hyena turned towards her.

Wagner was not resisting, and so Jackal was ignoring him. ~Weapon. I need a weapon,~ Wagner thought.

The answer came to him in big red letters on a Post-It note. DON'T FORGET GUN IN TRUNK.

~What _kind_ of gun?~

~Let's just hope it's got more power than this pea-shooter,~ he thought ruefully, looking down at the Beretta. Painfully, he climbed to his feet, leaning against the wall for support.

"Vinnie, help!" Sophia's cry cut across the room as Hyena smacked her across the face. She collapsed to the ground from the force of the blow.

Jackal had forced the elevator doors open and was about to proceed to his destination. "Hurry up, sis," he snarled.

"Just a minute," Hyena chortled, looking down at Sophia Lorenz. The security guard was pinned to the floor, her legs trapped between Hyena's feet and her spiked heels that had extended out of her feet to form piton-like spikes. Two spinning buzzsaws churned out of Hyena's elbows. "I've got a security guard to take care of."

The left buzzsaw began to descend. Sophia screamed.

Wagner Gregarino glared up at Hyena, a crazed light in his eyes. "Hey, lady, your momma was a snowblower!"

"What?" Hyena demanded.

~I've got to save Sophia. Got to lure those two out of the building--towards the car.~ He staggered forward, picking up an ornamental pen set off the receptionist's desk and throwing it at her. "You heard me, diesel breath." Wagner pointed at the buzzsaws. "You cut your own hair with those?" he snickered. "Sure looks like it."

Hyena's eyes were wide with shock; then, they narrowed in rage. "Why you little..."  
He pitched a vase full of flowers at Jackal. "You too, buddy-o. Your daddy shoulda read the instructions before he assembled you!"

"Get him!" Jackal growled.

Wagner opened fire on Jackal. The Beretta didn't cause any lasting damage--in fact, Wagner didn't think any of the bullets actually hit; Vinnie's aim was the pits--but the hail of bullets was annoying enough to lure the cyborg out of the elevator and towards him.

Wagner didn't dare shoot at Hyena for fear of hitting Sophia. Maybe his old body could have managed it, but not this one. Instead, he fired at Jackal until he ran out of bullets and then bounced the empty gun off Hyena's head. It was the first direct hit he'd made all night.

"What's your boyfriend say if you forget to oil yourself before a date?" he asked nastily.

"Oooh, that's it!" Hyena abandoned Sophia, charging towards Wagner with murder in her eyes.

~No kidding, that's it.~ With two homicidal cyborgs charging at him, Wagner did the only sensible thing--he turned and ran for the door as fast as he could go.

Jackal fired a volley of finger-spikes at the fleeing Wagner, but he avoided them, more thanks to a fortunate turn of the revolving door and less to Vinnie's agility. The door, however, slowed Jackal and Hyena down. Jackal waited for the door to revolve around to admit him; Hyena was too impatient to wait for a slot of her own and simply wrapped herself into cannonball form, careening right through the glass and metal. While unwrapping, she tripping herself on a twisted pipe and landed atop her brother. It gave Wagner the time he needed to reach the K-car.

Wagner struggled with the keys and finally forced the trunk open. It groaned in complaint as Wagner flung it skyward with every bit of strength in Vinnie's body.

~Please let there be a gun here.~

He had to protect Sophia and Fox. Even if he died, they were safe; but he wouldn't die without fighting. He just wanted something decent to fight with...

In the bottom of the trunk was a generic grey gym bag. It was only half zipped up, and in the bottom Wagner could see a long, wide cylinder...yes, that was a _barrel_...the largest gun barrel he'd ever seen, and he'd seen more than his share.

"It's a goddamn missile launcher," Wagner breathed in German. ~One of those antitank things...~

~Antitank?~ He caught himself laughing. ~This thing could blow up a 747.~

~What the hell kind of guy _is_ this Vinnie?~

He'd think about that later. Right now, he couldn't be happier to see a powerful, hideously illegal weapon of destruction in the trunk of some schmuck's K-car. He hefted the gun--it was surprisingly light--and turned to face Hyena with a cold and evil smile on his lips.

"Come on, baby, light my fire."

Hyena's eyes widened in comical terror as she found herself on the business end of Mr. Carter. She was armoured, and she was repairable, but the weapon facing her was likely to leave her as nothing more than a smear of blood and grease on the pavement.

Vinnie's eyes were a warm brown, not crystal blue like Wagner's, but in that instant they turned to ice as Wagner's had done so many times before. Lips pressed together, he smiled and pulled the trigger.

SPLAT!

Hyena looked down with shock at the coconut cream splattered all across her stomach. Then she threw back her head and burst out laughing.

Wagner's face fell with utter dismay. He almost dropped the pie gun. His weapon was useless--worse than useless, a complete joke.

Well, he would die then. But he would die fighting. He was the master assassin of the Iron Clan of Bavaria, and the least he could do was buy time for the gargoyles, or the SWAT team, or the Xanatos Corporate Guard, or anyone else to arrive and deal with Jackal and Hyena.

His eyes shifted to the cyborgs. They were both advancing, with unholy grins on their faces.


	3. Chapter 3

**Wagner's Vendetta**

**Chapter Three of Three**

"I say, what a bloody mess," Griff commented as he looked down on the ruins of the warehouses from a nearby rooftop.

"Whoever did this," Hudson said, "is surely far away by now." The area was quiet, disturbed only by police investigators and fire crews poking through the wreckage, and, of course, the usual crowd of curious onlookers.

Goliath surveyed the scene below. "The police seem to have everything under control. Our help is not needed here."

"Shall we patrol then?" Griff suggested.

"We left the castle unprotected," Hudson protested.

"Hmmm," Goliath mused. "Perhaps we'd best return."

***

~Run first,~ Wagner thought, struggling to hoist the pie gun as he fled across the street. ~Run till I can't run any more...keep them busy as long as possible...every minute gets police a little closer.~ He risked a peek over his shoulder. Hyena was very close now, skittering along in a spiderlike form that sent sparks flashing where her body scraped the pavement.

Finally, he couldn't carry the pie gun any more. Wagner set it down and vaulted overtop of it, sending the cylinder bumping backwards. Hyena...yes, Hyena tripped on it! Now it was the metal on her face sending up sparks.

She screeched with rage as she got up, kicking the pie gun backwards. It landed with a thunk against the tires of Vinnie's K-car.

~Maybe I'll make it after...~

That was when Vinnie's foot found the lip of a manhole, and Wagner found himself face down on the opposite side of the street. He rolled himself into a sitting position, leaning against a red Chevy parked at the curb. Funny how Vinnie's feet were attracted to nearby obstacles.

Of course, what Hyena was about to do to him wasn't funny at all. She stood in the middle of the lane now, hands raised in claws...

That was when a black Mercedes-Benz came careening around the corner at full speed. Aashlee slammed on the brakes, but it was far too late. The car smashed into Hyena at upwards of forty miles an hour, driving the grill back towards the dashboard and sending Hyena flying.

~Just in time,~ Wagner thought.

"Oh, scheiss!" a young teenage voice cursed in German. Aashlee's voice. The driver's door opened, and out came his daughter, closely followed by Brooklyn.

~Wait a minute,~ Wagner thought, ~THAT'S _MY_ CAR!!!!~

"I never meant to hit her...don't be dead, please!" Aashlee cried, dashing towards her victim. Hyena's limbs were short-circuiting. Her left leg was crushed; the other one flopped around wildly, completely haywire. Her circuits were sparking an eerie blue colour. She was out of commission.

"Get back!" Wagner cried to his adopted daughter. It was only then that the two gargoyles noticed him lying there. "Don't get near her!"

"Vati?" Aashlee asked.

"She'd have killed me," Wagner puffed, struggling to his feet. "There's another..."

"Hyena," Brooklyn growled, identifying the individual they had hit.

The passenger door of the Mercedes swung open, and Wagner watched as someone came out. He took a step closer, drawn almost hypnotically, and in seconds, he was face-to-face with himself.

"That's me!" Vinnie said in wonderment.

Wagner grabbed ahold of his body's sleeve. "Thank God..." He raised his eyes to...his eyes. His body's eyes. "Change us back."

"How?"

"Did you do this?"

"No!"

"Great," Wagner muttered. His emotions were a mixture of relief that Vinnie wasn't a sorcerer who had deliberately hijacked his body, and frustration that Vinnie couldn't turn them both back to normal.

Suddenly, there was a scream from inside the Eyrie Building.

"Jackal!" Wagner gasped. ~I can't believe I forgot about...~

"Sophia!" Vinnie cried. He looked down at Wagner, frantic. "Where's Sophia?"

"She's in there with Fox," Wagner replied. "Ach, scheiss, I should have been ready for that!" ~Too late for regrets now. We have to move, and move fast.~

Brooklyn and Aashlee charged up the steps of the Eyrie Building, eyes aglow. Vinnie raced behind them, his panicked expression clearly visible on Wagner's face. Wagner Gregarino followed afterwards, trying to stop the young gargoyles from rushing blindly into a dangerous situation.

"Stop where you are," Jackal said, his voice cold. The laser gun on his forearm was in the "out" position, and it was aiming directly at Sophia Lorenz's temple. She was held firmly in his left arm. "There are four of you, and one of me," Jackal explained. "But if you try anything, I kill her."

"Take it easy," Brooklyn said, trying to sound like Elisa. "Nobody wants to get hurt tonight. Why don't you tell us what you want?"

"I want the blueprints to Xanatos Enterprises' latest projects," he said. He could get this job done with or without his sister.

"Okay," Brooklyn agreed. "Aashlee, go and get them out of the sub basement."

"I don't know where they are!" she hissed in his ear.

"Just play along!" Brooklyn whispered back. "Grab anything, I don't care! Anything that'll make him let her go!"

Aashlee put her hands up in the air. "I'm just going in to get the blueprints," she informed Jackal, trying to look as non-threatening as possible.

"Don't try anything," he retorted, but he let her pass. "You do, and she dies." He shook Sophia.

"Sophia," Vinnie mouthed, his face white. Wagner's eyes started to glow with Vinnie's rage. "LET HER GO!"

Wagner knew that temper very, very well. ~If my anger comes out as Vinnie's wimpiness, then the littlest bit of Vinnie's anger will come out as rage. If he doesn't know how to control or direct that fury...~ Wagner jumped up onto Vinnie's back, right between the wings, and pulled him to the ground. "Be quiet or he'll kill her!" Wagner snapped, wrestling Vinnie down. The man might be in a powerful gargoyle body, but his fighting skills were weak and his will was halfhearted.

"I gotta do something!" Vinnie pleaded.

Wagner looked up. "We will. Just stay down."

They were on the pavement of the road. Vinnie's puke-green K-car was between them and Jackal. Wagner peeked out to see the cyborg still standing near the Eyrie building, talking to Brooklyn. The street was completely deserted otherwise, which wasn't much of a surprise.

"Mr. Carter!" Vinnie cried, seeing his beloved pie gun lying in the street beside the vehicle. He pulled the weapon into his lap and examined it. "Augh! They put a scratch in Mr. C!"

"Yeah, well, look at my car," Wagner growled, jerking his head backwards to indicate the wreckage in the street.

Jackal was getting impatient. "Where is she?"

"Give her time," Brooklyn said, struggling to keep his voice calm. "There's a lot of security codes down there and she doesn't know them all by heart."

The male cyborg looked around. He was getting uneasy. He'd been here too long--police would be arriving soon, and he knew he wouldn't do well on his own against a whole SWAT team. His eye narrowed coldly. "Well, then, gargoyle, let's make a deal. For every minute I have to wait..." He slid a blade out of his index finger. "...our little guard here will go more and more to pieces." Sophia's eyes widened in terror. "Let's start with an ear, shall we?"

Sophia clenched her teeth, fighting not to cry as she felt the cold blade gently slip overtop of her ear. The pressure was very slight, but her captor could slice her ear off with one flick of his finger.

"Sophia," Vinnie whispered, the face of his new body going ashen.

Wagner cursed. She was in trouble, and he was stuck in a miserable human body with no weapons and couldn't shoot straight even if he _did_ have one and this idiotic SCHMUCK had his assassin's form and...

~Wait a minute...~

A quick glance over the scene. Yes.

"Vinnie," he whispered tersely.

"What?"

"Lift the pie gun and shoot the cyborg in the face."

"But Sophia..."

"Brooklyn can take him down. If you blind him."

Vinnie looked over the distance from the car to the steps where Jackal stood. "I can't shoot that far..."

"Yes, you can."

"Man, you don't understand! I'm a lousy shot! I..."

"Not in that body, you're not," Wagner said, staring him in the eyes.

Sophia felt the blade rise along the side of her head, in preparation for a downward stroke. Her control dissolved. "Vinnie! Help me!"

The humanlike gargoyle's eyes flashed. Vinnie popped up from behind the K-car with the pie gun on his shoulder. His wings flared open behind him, and Wagner watched in wonder to see his angry self in action. Vincent Wagner Gregarino took aim, smiled slightly, and pulled the trigger.

SPLAT! The aim was straight and true.

One minute, Jackal's human eye had been fixed on his terrified captive's face while his cyborg eye tracked Brooklyn, Vinnie and Wagner by their heat emissions. The next moment, the whole world was coconut cream. The moisture invaded his eye sensors, and Jackal had enough human nerves left in the area to tell him that it hurt. He automatically released Sophia and raised his hands to his face, trying to clear away whatever had struck him out of nowhere.

No sooner had Sophia been pushed away than Brooklyn leaped to the attack. He lashed out with his tail, tripping the cyborg, and punched him in the face as he went down.

Vinnie and Wagner scrambled out from behind the K-car. Vinnie picked Sophia right up off the ground and held her close. "You okay?" he asked.

"Vinnie?" she whispered, recognizing the voice. Her arms tightened around his chest. But the face...she didn't know the face...and were those _wings_ behind his back? She looked quizzically over at the man nearby, who certainly _looked_ like Vinnie...

"He's Vinnie," Wagner said. "He just...looks like me at the moment."

Sophia was still too much in shock to question that logic. "Vinnie?"

"Yeah? You okay?" Vinnie asked.

"Yes," she said, and buried her face in his chest.

A scrabbling sound. "Jackal!" Wagner cried.

The cyborg was scrambling to his feet. "You've made the worst mistake of your lives," he snarled, and fired off a laser blast.

Wagner cried out, clutching his arm, but only a human cry came from his mouth. His right hand immediately clamped over the wound to staunch the flow of blood.

Brooklyn lunged. His talons scraped harmlessly over metal, and the cyborg cuffed him hard across the face. As the gargoyle fell backwards, Jackal's leg telescoped out to follow up the smack with a powerful kick.

Vinnie set Sophia back down on the ground. "Get back," he mumbled, pushing up the sleeves of the black leather jacket he wore. He didn't know what was happening, exactly--his veins were burning, his chest was tightening, his muscles were tensing, and his pulse was pounding in his ears. His gargoyle eyes lit up with white light. The black wings flared.

"Come on, Mr. Hero," Jackal taunted.

Brooklyn was groaning on the ground. Vinnie's body was injured, and its current resident out of the fight, but Vinnie never even thought to be concerned. He was now the only thing between Jackal and Sophia. Vinnie opened his mouth to yell an Indian war cry, and an animal growl came out.

Vinnie wasn't exactly sure what happened next. His human mind did not know what signals to give the wings and their little hands, to make them move. His intention was to rush up and punch Jackal as hard as he could.

Wagner looked up, gritting his teeth despite the pain, and saw Vinnie attack. The great black wings spread, carrying Vinnie up the steps in one jump. The arm came back, and Vinnie Wagner dealt Jackal a mighty punch to the side of the jaw with the full compliment of Wagner's gargoyle strength.

Had Jackal been human, the blow would have snapped his neck. As it was, Jackal felt some of his circuitry break when his head was forced around. He barely managed to kick Vinnie away.

Jackal was still computing the extent of the damage when Aashlee reappeared with Fox at her side. Both of them were toting rather large pulse cannons. "You wanted some Xanatos technology?" Aashlee asked sweetly.

The cannons fired in unison, taking off Jackal's cybernetic arms. "Be my guest," Fox growled.

Brooklyn had recovered from his fall. The red gargoyle broke off a nearby street sign, leaving a long metal pole. He walked over to Jackal, being careful just in case the cyborg still had some fight left in him, but with Fox holding the pulse cannon to his head, Jackal was being very cooperative. He permitted Brooklyn to secure his legs together with the pole.

Aashlee set down her weapon and approached Wagner. She tore a strip off his security guard jacket and began to bind it around the wound. Meanwhile, Sophia helped Vinnie to his feet. They entered the building together to check on the other security guards.

"I say, I do believe we missed all the fun," said an English-accented voice overhead. There was a rush of wings, and Griff, Goliath and Hudson touched down.

Hudson and Goliath began to clear the malfunctioning Hyena off the center of the street. She screeched at them, but to her intense frustration, her voice was about the only part of her body that was still functional. Even so, she gave Goliath a good bite on the tail.

"You _could_ have gotten here sooner," Wagner growled at the griffin.

Griff turned his head to glare, then noticed the body Wagner's voice was coming out of. Griff's eyes got very large and he started to chuckle. "Hudson told me, but I still don't believe it..."

Wagner gritted his teeth, walked over to the K-car, and picked up the pie gun. It was heavy, and hurt like the dickens with his wounded arm, but this was going to be worth it. "Apologize," he snarled with an odd light in his eyes.

Griff's eyes got even bigger, threatening to fall out of his head. "Wha...no...Goliath, he wouldn't..." The griffin's gaze was drawn back to the very large barrel pointing his way and the crazed look on Vinnie Wagner's face. "Would he?" Griff squeaked.

"Fire away," Hudson said with a smirk. Griff turned to stare at him, openmouthed.

Wagner pulled the trigger several times. Griff took a coconut cream to the face; the last pie, the banana cream, splattered him from head to toe.

The British gargoyle stood still for a few minutes, assuring himself he was still alive. His tongue slipped out of his beak to lick at the coconut cream. "You...you...you..." Griff babbled.

Wagner snickered a little. "No hard feelings, Griff."

The griffin's eyes narrowed. "I will never forgive you for what you've done..." Wagner knew he was not referring to the pie, but to an incident that had taken place during World War Two.

"Okay," Wagner said. "Don't forgive me. I know that's a tall order." He crossed his arms--actually, Vinnie's arms--and began to pace. "I know you don't care that your friend would have killed me if I hadn't shot him. I know I was on the wrong side in the war. I know you cared for him. It's been fifty years for me, but only three for you. If it makes things any better, I'm sorry. Now we have to go on with our lives, and sniping at one another isn't making that any easier."

"I still don't like you."

"I'm not asking you to like me, just to let me be." The griffin fell quiet, considering. Wagner continued, "Though I'd rather not be left to be like this." A small smile actually appeared on Griff's beak, in spite of himself.

There was a movement at the doors. Owen appeared, as fastidious-looking as ever, followed by Vinnie and Sophia, holding hands.

"How are the guards?" Wagner asked.

"Most of their injuries are minor," Owen reported. "An ambulance is on the way." He turned to Wagner. "Ah, Mr. Gregarino. Or should that be, Mr. Wagner? I trust you are enjoying your evening?" An uncharacteristically mischievous light sparkled in the blue eyes.

Goliath raised an eyebrow. "Puck! _You_ are responsible for this sorcery?"

"Technically, Alexander is responsible," Owen replied, brushing some imaginary lint off his suit. "The magic was all his."

"Hey," Brooklyn protested angrily, "Alex doesn't go around bugging people with his magic. Lex was clear about that. There's no way Alex would hocus-pocus us if we didn't ask him to."

"Maybe Alex got instructions," Aashlee said, glaring at Owen, "from his teacher."

"Puck," Goliath said warningly.

"It will end at sunrise," Owen assured them.

Hudson glanced upwards. "That will not be long."

"Sunrise?" Vinnie asked. Most of the conversation had gone right over his head. "What're youse talkin' about?"

"He's saying," Wagner said, wincing from the pain in his arm, "that at sunrise, you and I are going to be back in the proper bodies."

The wail of an approaching siren could be heard in the distance. "Perhaps we'd best get off the street," Goliath suggested.

"We'll meet you in the castle," Hudson said, and the five natural-born gargoyles walked away in search of a building to glide from.

***

"I can't believe this," Vinnie said, looking around at a roomful of gargoyles. He tried to relax as he waited for the sun to rise.

"_You_ can't believe it?" Sophia asked. "I've never even _seen_ one before, and tonight, not only do I get attacked by killer cyborgs, I spend the rest of the night in a castle full of gargoyles!"

"They're not really all that bad," Vinnie said. "I mean, you guys gave me some awful scares--" Goliath nodded sympathetically "--but they aren't the menaces to society the Quarrymen make them out to be."

"I thought you were going to Japan," Angela said. "Goliath told me about the incident with John Castaway in the ruined clock tower."

"Yeah, but...well, they got gargoyles over there too, you know. Little village called Ishimura. Man, the place is crawlin' with 'em! So I figured, if I gotta be surrounded by gargoyles, I might as well do it in the place where I grew up."

***

"He's a real little dickens, isn't he," Brooklyn asked, tucking in the covers where Alex had knocked them loose.

"You bet," Broadway agreed.

Lexington smirked. "Just wait till _you_ two have kids." Brooklyn's mouth kind of gaped at that. Lex ignored him, looking down proudly at Alex. "You've got to admit, the kid knows how to cast a spell."

"Yeah, there's only one problem," Brooklyn said. "I'm really gonna hate to see the mood Wagner wakes up in tomorrow."

"You don't think he's going to come after Alex, do you?" Broadway asked. "I mean..." The stocky gargoyle never got a chance to finish the sentence before the sun rose.

***

Vinnie Gregarino watched the glow on the eastern horizon. "Okay, here we go," he said aloud. Sophia squeezed his hand reassuringly.

"By the way," Wagner said, "enjoy it now, because in a few minutes you're going to have one hell of a pain in your arm."

"Good luck," Sophia said, and then the sun rose. His hand turned to stone in her grasp.

Vinnie felt his host's body stiffen around him. He struggled to move, and could not. His organs stopped functioning, but there was no pain, no need for breath. A darkness descended before his eyes.

Wagner saw his body turn to stone in front of him. There was a pulling sensation, an incredible disorientation. He fought it at first until he realized that his mind was struggling to pull free of Vinnie's body. He relaxed and let it go.

Sleep. Rest.

Vinnie experienced a rush, the sensation of plummetting downwards, and then warm, soft flesh wrapping around him. His limbs tingled. He tried to suck in air, and this body responded. Furthermore, something felt...incredibly _right_. He looked down, tentatively, and saw his own hands. He attempted to move the right one, and it obeyed his command. He tried the left...

Oh, geez, that hurt! The gargoyle had been right--Jackal had hit him a good one! "Man, I better get the doc to look at that," he said, and the voice was his own. For the first time in over twelve hours, what he thought meshed perfectly with what he said.

Vinnie raised his head. Sophia was worriedly clutching the hand of the stone gargoyle. "Soph?" he said.

She turned to him, releasing the gargoyle, her face brightening up. "Vinnie!" She rushed towards him to give him a hug. "It's good to have you back again."

"Well," Vinnie said, blushing, "it ain't like I'm anything special. I ain't Super Soldier like Mr. Wagner there." He looked over his shoulder at the stone man with wings.

"I don't know," Sophia replied, "you stopped Jackal." She bit down a little on her lower lip.

Vinnie shrugged, trying to brush it off before he started stammering with surprise and embarrassment. "It's my job. You'd'a done the same..."

"Thank you," Sophia whispered, and she stood up on her tiptoes and kissed him.

His eyes went wide, and for the first few moments he couldn't make himself react at all. When the truth finally sank in, he summoned up all her courage to kiss her back.

She pulled away from him at last, looking up at him nervously.

"Soph?"

"Y...yes?"

Vinnie wrapped his arm around her back. "Wanna learn to shoot a pie?"

***

Sunset. Broadway, Brooklyn and Lexington woke up in Alexander's room just as Owen was tucking the toddler in. "Good evening," Owen said as the gargoyles awoke.

"You know what Wagner's like with a grudge," Broadway continued from the night before.

"Well," Brooklyn sighed, "if Wagner's mad enough to act, he'll probably do it soon."

"I think I'd better stay here tonight," Lexington said worriedly. Broadway and Brooklyn nodded.

"We'll keep you company," Broadway said, and it wasn't a request.

They didn't have to wait long.

Less than an hour after sunset, the door of the room slammed open with a noise like a thunderclap; the inside handle gouged a hole in the wall, such was the force of the impact. Wagner stood in the doorway, his wings raised so the golden gauntlets of his wing hands were above his head, and the tips of his wings trailed on the floor. His face was hidden by shadow; his eyes were a pair of glowing coals in the darkened face. His right hand was hidden behind his back.

Wagner was back to his old self.

And Wagner was _pissed._

Owen stood up beside Alex's little bed, as placid as ever. "Ah, Mr. Wagner. What can I do for you?"

Brooklyn was about to say, "You mean the murderous look in his eyes didn't give you a clue?" but he bit his remark off with one look at Wagner's face. The humanlike gargoyle really did look mad enough to kill.

"You aren't going to hurt Alex?" Lex blurted, stepping in front of the sleeping child. "He's just a little kid! He didn't know! He..."

"No," Wagner answered, his voice tight with tension. "I won't hurt the kid."

"Mr. Xanatos will be happy to hear..." Owen began, when Wagner's left hand lashed out and caught him by his shirt collar, heaving him up a foot off the floor.

"You," Wagner growled, "are something else again." He brought his right hand out from behind his back and gave Owen a good look at the business end of a snubnosed automatic machine gun. Furthermore, the gargoyle had customized this weapon; mounted above the gunsights was a long, sharp bayonet made of pure iron.

"Pick your form," Wagner hissed, resting the bayonet against Owen's chest and flipping the safety off the weapon. "You're dead either way."

Owen considered his options. He could transform into Puck and think of a loophole to explain it later--say, an _immediate_ magic lesson--but from the pressure on his chest, he knew the gargoyle would skewer him first. As Owen, he was equally vulnerable to the shells of the gun and the blade of the bayonet.

Not even Oberon had threatened him with death. His captor's eyes were gleaming, yes, with anger--but also with a cold, detached resolve. For the first time in his entire existence, the Puck knew true fear.

Broadway was horrified. "We can't let him do this!"

Brooklyn clapped a hand over his mouth. "Sssh! In this state he could shoot us all before he knew what he was doing..."

"Any last words?" snarled Wagner.

The Puck's eyes widened in pure abject terror, and his persona came crashing down. "HELP!" Owen screamed at the top of his lungs.

Wagner dropped him and burst out in a chuckle.

Lex's and Brooklyn's jaws fell open. In his crib, Alex blinked sleepily and gurgled.

The humanlike gargoyle folded his arms and wings and looked down at Owen sternly. "I hope you'll remember that next time you decide to toy with people." Owen nodded weakly.

A..._prank_? Brooklyn finally found his voice. "Geez, Wagner, you coulda killed him!"

Wagner laughed and waved the gun. "It wasn't loaded." Broadway breathed a sigh of relief. Wagner glared at Owen and added, "This time." He proceeded to fold his wings and walk out.

***

Aashlee met him on the parapets of the castle. "Vati?" she asked tentatively.

"Mmmm?" He flexed his wings and murmered to himself, "Ah, it's good to be back."

"You're not mad about..."

"You saved my life last night," he murmured. "That's worth more to me than a car."

Aashlee breathed a sigh of relief and gave her adopted father a hug. He wrapped an arm and a wing around her to hug her back.

"Of course," he continued, "I'm never going to let you touch my staff car as long as you live..."

~finis~


End file.
